


Walking the Night

by Path



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 12:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6328675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Csethiro wakes to find her husband missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking the Night

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme, sleepwalking Maia

Csethiro wakes in a bed not her own, naked and alone. 

She has rather a nasty moment of it, actually. But once she gets her bearings she settles quickly; she can recognize the heavy brocade hangings and the size of the bed, for she has seen them a handful of times now, and she can recall the company of her husband and what last night held.

The memory, flushed and awkward but very pleasant, is disturbed with the realization that she is alone- truly alone. Maia is not in his bed and his nohecharei not at their posts. She can hear voices, low and urgent, in the outer chambers. Csethiro feels a rush of panic, climbing out of bed and pulling on the nightgown and housecoat the edocharei have left for her; what is toward? Attack, poison, assassination? Illness? Bad news come deep in the night? She wishes she had her sword with her, a comfort in difficult times, but Beshelar will not allow her to bear it inside the Alcethmeret, and she has grudgingly accepted the law… for the time being.

She slips from the room to find the nohecharei not yet far, and Maia with them. Her relief is tempered by the strange, shambling look to her husband, thin and oddly childlike in his nightgown, hair braided down his back. He is trying to open the door to the stairs, hands curiously clumsy as they fumble the doorknob. Cala and Beshelar are close, not helping nor interfering, and their heads are tilted together. They are conferring; Cala whips around swiftly when Csethiro peers in, and Beshelar is only a second behind him.

“What is happening?” she asks, cutting to it. There is an odd feel of conspiracy in the air.

The nohecharei glance to each other, and Beshelar takes point, looking ill at ease. He is obviously troubled at having to speak to a woman in her nightgown, and he is very red, though he controls himself admirably. “Zhasan, His Serenity will return to bed soon. Please do not trouble yourself. We have it well in hand.”

Csethiro glances at her husband, mindlessly working at an unresponsive door. The glance alone does most of the work; she has been trained since she was a child how to say volumes without speaking a word. “To be sure,” she says scathingly, though she keeps her tone mild. “But appraise us of the details all the same, or we shall end up waiting alone in his chambers for the news, and we are not eager to spend our night so.”

The two nohecharei share embarrassed looks. She is being difficult, she knows, but she is Empress now. She may impose as much as she wishes and demand what would otherwise be withheld. She knows she must be more diplomatic in matters of her husband, but still, she has some sway, and she will be damned if she doesn’t use it.

Beshelar squares up. “Zhasan, His Serenity is… sleepwalking,” he says, trying to keep a front of bravado despite how quietly he is forced to speak. “As he does from time to time. It does not last the night; if you will be patient, he will return soon.” He glances again at Cala- seeking his approval or agreement, Csethiro realizes. “We did not think to warn you, Zhasan, for which we apologize. We had not thought…” He trails off, but Cala picks up the thread of his sentence.

“He had not walked the other times you had spent the night in the Alcethmeret,” Cala explains. “We had begun to think he would not do so while you were present, for whatever reason.”

“But he does so often?” Csethiro asks. “When we are not present?”

Beshelar looks uncomfortable, but Cala nods. “Often enough. We are somewhat familiar with it, by now.”

Csethiro dares the obvious question. “Why do you not simply wake him?” she asks, and moves to her husband’s side.

At least, she would- the nohecharei are in her way in a flash. “I beg you, do not disturb him, Zhasan,” Cala says, urgent and low. “It is not merely sleepwalking, as we had said. We cannot risk waking his body while his-”

Beshelar cuts him off with a severe glance, and the two break into swift argument. “Surely that is the Emperor’s business, maza?”

“The Emperor doesn’t understand it himself,” Cala says. “Even should he, he cannot tell us now.”

“So you will give his secrets away to any outsider while he sleeps?”

“She is his _wife_ ,” Cala says severely, the capstone of the nohecharei’s increasing volume. “You have seen his devotion to her. He would wish her to know.”

“To know what?” Csethiro interjects, unwilling to sit back and allow them to discuss her any longer.

The two share another furious look between them, which Cala breaks. “He is _theilcainis_ , Zhasan.”

“A worldwalker?” Csethiro asks, incredulous. “Legend and child’s tales.” She tries for a step around Cala, which he neatly blocks.

“We humbly disagree,” Cala says evenly. “You have seen him at meditation. Have you not seen it yourself?”

It gives her pause. Maia has been teaching her what he knows of meditation; she has enjoyed using it prior to her practice with the blade. She thinks of Maia kneeling, his exceptional breath control, his distance and peace… the minutes it takes for him to drift back to true consciousness.

Cala’s words interrupt her thoughts. His eyes are wide, his expression solemn. “It is no tale, Zhasan. Wherever His Serenity is, it is not in his body. And as his nohecharei and guardian of his spirit, I cannot allow it to come to harm.”

Csethiro thinks. Finally, she submits herself humbly. “What is done, then?”

Cala looks relieved, though Beshelar’s glare is as fierce as ever. “We wait, usually. He does not walk long- less than an hour, at the time he would dream deepest. We can guide him back after that.”

She thinks on that, too. She is not used to having to be so considerate; dealing with her husband and his cautious, hesitant ways has taught her a little temperance. “Why does it happen?”

Cala shrugs a little, and Beshelar gives him a disapproving glance. “Who can tell?” he asks in return. “It is not a maza’s talent. Perhaps the long exposure to meditative techniques? He could have accidentally severed his spirit from his body at some point, and never fully recovered the link. Or some…” he pauses as if he should like to stop, but continues his thought, “-some past trauma, perhaps.”

Gods know her husband must have suffered such. None of them need to say it. They look as one to him, rail-thin in his nightgown. It covers his arm, but Csethiro has seen the thick tangle of scars there. It is bizarrely contradictory to her, the very idea of a pitiful Emperor. Even as they watch him, he mumbles in his sleep. It is muted and halting, but Csethiro finally translates it. “Please, let me go,” he is saying, very quiet and mangled. “Please. Please.” A subtle glance show the nohecharei in danger of their hearts breaking. Clearly they have seen this pathetic sight before, but it strikes them still.

“We would wish to wait as well,” Csethiro says softly. The nohecharei once more share wordless conference, and finally agree, though it is clear they would prefer she went back to bed. Well, Csethiro was not put on this earth to make her family’s guards happy, as true now that she is Drazharan as it was when she was Ceredin.

They sit in silence awhile. Then, “Please…” Maia murmurs. “Please,” and scrabbles at the handle.

“Did you lock the door?” Csethiro asks. Better awkward and unusual conversation than sitting around watching her husband cry piteously to be let out.

Cala affirms it. “We did not stop him the first time. He made it down the stairs- both sets- and nearly out of the Alcethmeret before he woke. The next few times, much the same.” Beshelar glares at him, but Cala muses, “We wonder if he is not trying to escape.”

“You said it does not last long?” she asks absently.

“Thirty or forty minutes,” Cala says. “Though… what is the clock now?”

“Half-past three,” Beshelar supplies, sparing a glance to the timepiece on the mantle.

The sound Cala makes is subtle for a maza, a guardsman, but not for a courtier, and Csethiro pierces it easily. She raises her eyebrows in the sort of deadly cool scrutiny her mother wielded so well and often. Cala’s ears lower in rebuke, though she has said nothing. “It is only… it has been somewhat longer than that tonight, Zhasan,” he provides. All three of them look to Maia again in concern.

“So where is it his soul goes?” she asks, breaking the silence.

“Who can tell?” Cala says. “One would have to be a worldwalker himself, or have the gift of Sight, to follow His Serenity or watch his movements.”

“We don’t suppose he could-” The idea is so preposterous that Csethiro nearly does not voice it. It is the sort of stupid thing one says when one is utterly uneducated in a subject. But she perserveres. “We don’t suppose he could be locked out?”

It is clear the lieutenant thinks she is joking at a poor time for it, and immediately swoops in. “Zhasan, surely the night tires you,” he bristles. “Allow one of us to escort you back.” It is not an offer. Beshelar went a few different colours in close order, but Csethiro’s eyes are drawn to Cala, who merely goes pale.

“It could be,” he says softly, and creeps to the door to help Maia’s clumsy hands with the locks. Beshelar is at his side in a second, offering quiet rebukes to the effect that chasing the Emperor’s sleeping body all across the Untheileneise Court is not precisely proper. But the maza does not listen. It is oddly hilarious to her in a horrible way, the idea of two Maias helplessly scratching at both sides of the same door. She does not laugh.

Maia steps out the door in a strange sort of walk that makes her think uncomfortably of the dead. She thinks of the long flight of stairs. She thinks too of his flimsy nightgown and the cold outside, and the horror that might be _someone else_ seeing him like this. She can hear Csoru’s gossip already. It is clear the same fears root into her husband’s nohecharei.

But unfounded, at least for now, for a moment later she can hear him speak to Cala on the landing, low and confused. “Where am I?” he asks, clearly too clouded in waking to think in formal plural. Then Cala is leading him in, Beshelar swooping to flank his other side. She thinks at first they will put him straight to bed, but to her pleasure they stop at the low couch she had been sitting at, and she welcomes her husband with a gentle embrace.

“Csethiro,” he murmurs, voice sweetly rough with his restless sleep. “What-”

She only kisses him on the forehead, and tells him the sort of lie she would tell a child as vulnerable and in need of protection as he. “You were sleepwalking,” she says, soft enough not to shock him. “Come back to bed.” 

And he does, and falls back into true sleep quickly and without trouble. But Csethiro lies awake a long time and wonders what sort of training or drug might help one to distance oneself from their body. She cannot help but think of her husband’s spirit wandering the court or further, and she has no intention of standing by and waiting for him again. If poor Maia, her pitiable Emperor, insists on pacing restlessly through the unseen world in his sleep, she thinks it would be only her duty and pride to guard him.


End file.
